Contribute
to the cost of obtaining an independent review of ICANN's failure
to follow its own rules on openness and transparency, and my expenses of
reporting on this story.

What's this all about?

My reporting on the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has gone
through several stages over the last decade,
and is now about a very different, and more fundamental,
set of issues than were at stake in my earliest
stories about ICANN and Internet domains names for travel.

The details are tedious,
but what is at stake is not just the control of an important
global resource -- the Internet -- but the broader question
of the rights of journalists and the public in a world in
which the power to make decisions over such important public
resources is being transferred by governments to private
corporations that lack accountability or transparency.

I'm sorry that the story may seem technical, but fundamental
rights are actually at stake. It's not just about travel:
ICANN's handling of .aero and .travel epitomizes the
larger problems with Internet governance
and privatization of decision-making on public policy.

I didn't set out to write a treatise on ICANN
or on how and by whom the Internet is "governed",
and I didn't expect to become a participant myself in
the story. My coverage of ICANN began with my attempt to report on what
seemed a relatively straightforward story at the intersection of
my interests in travel, the Internet, and consumer advocacy: the
creation under ICANN's supervision of top-level Internet domain
names (TLD's, like .com or .edu or .info) restricted to
the travel industry: .aero (for air transportation) and
.travel (originally proposed by the airline cartel IATA, but
eventually approved for a wider range of the travel industry,
although still to the exclusion of travellers).

For travellers, the issue is that while keeping top-level
domains artificially scarce to enhance their value to the handful
of companies given the franchise to control them, ICANN is allocating
a huge proportion of this limited Internet "namespace" for the
exclusive use of the industry that sells travel-related services
-- and is equating that industry with the entire concept of travel.

ICANN's own consultants agreed with me that neither
airlines nor the travel industry adequately represent the
interests of consumers and travellers. They recommended
against .travel, for this same reason, when it was first
proposed in 2000, and again in 2004. ICANN overruled them

What should be a public commons is being captured by corporate
interests, travel is being reduced to the purchase of services,
and travellers and the rest of the public are being reduced to
consumers. .aero and .travel are the first industry-specific
TLD's, making travel the test case of the corporate enclosure of
this virtual commons.

But that turns out to be the least of the problems
I've uncovered. In trying to investigate who was really behind the
.travel and .aero proposals, and to report on ICANN's consideration
of their applications, I came up against a pattern of cronyism,
back-room deals, and above all of secrecy and
arbitrariness in both the substance and the
process of making decisions -- in fundamental violation of the
high-sounding
commitment in ICANN's bylaws
that "ICANN and its
constituent bodies shall operate to the maximum extent feasible
in an open and transparent manner and consistent with procedures
designed to ensure fairness." And when I tried to complain,
I discovered that ICANN is accountable to no one,
and has made no provision for oversight of its decisions.

What began as an attempt to "get the story" as a journalist,
and to advocate for the interests of travellers and consumers,
gradually became, of unfortunate necessity, first an attempt
to hold ICANN to its purported principles of transparency and
then, when that was denied, an attempt to hold ICANN accountable
under its purported provisions for independent oversight.

ICANN is the governing body of the Internet, but ICANN doesn't
like to speak of what it does as "governing" because that might suggest
that it should be held to the same standards of democracy, public
accountability, etc. as a government agency, or even that its
power should be transferred to some sort of actual government
entity.

Unfortunately, governance of the Internet by ICANN is the
poster child for the efforts of the government of the USA not
just to privatize and outsource to corporations the provision
of government services (delivering the mail, sweeping the streets,
etc.) but to privatize governance itself -- that
is, to outsource to corporations the making of policy decisions --
and to impose that model of corporatized private governance on the
world, regardless of any objections by other governments or global
civil society.

To point out, as I have, that ICANN is arbitrary and secretive,
is to call into question whether corporations can do a better job
of the process of governing than the traditional institutions of
democratic government (elections, legislatures, courts, etc.). That's a heresy
that religious devotees of "market forces" as divinely inspired,
and believers in the inherent superiority of privatization, are
constitutionally incapable of imagining, much less admitting.
If they did, that would cast doubt on whether the "ICANN model" of
delegating decision-making to private corporations should be
extended to other areas where public policies are currently set
by legislation or government regulations.

As a private California corporation, ICANN exercises
government-style global power over the Internet, without
admitting to being subject to any of the laws that protect
the rights of the press and the public when we are dealing
with actual government agencies.

In ICANN's Alice-In-Wonderland world of privatized
governance, open meeting laws, freedom of information or
"sunshine" laws, and laws guaranteeing administrative due
process are replaced by corporate bylaws on "transparency"
and "accountability". And if your rights under those bylaws
are violated, as mine have been, your only possibility of
redress is through -- you guessed it --
private arbitration
by another corporation, not the courts.

At the most fundamental level,
my dispute with ICANN over access to meetings,
documents, and records has become the test case of the meaning
of "due process" and "judicial review" in the context of privatized
government-by-corporation. What rights, if any, do the public
and the press have to access to information about the process
of decision making? And what, if any, accountability do
corporations have to independent oversight when they are
exercising the authority to determine public policy? As
privatization "progresses" from delivery of services to
the decision-making functions of government, these are
crucial questions for the retention of any semblance of
democracy and justice.

ICANN claims to have agreed to submit to "independent" arbitration
of whether they followed their own transparency bylaws
in their (non)responses to my attempts to report on .travel.
But it remains to be seen
if I will be offered genuinely
independent arbitration, or only a corporate kangaroo court
designed by ICANN to ensure that the arbitrators of their
choice rule in their favor or that the arbitration process
is so expensive that I can't afford to risk having to pay
for it if I lose -- which, of course, is what is required
for corporate justice.

Under its bylaws, ICANN is supposed to have procedures in
place for the arbitration, and to have chosen the arbitration
corporation in advance. They haven't. Instead, they are
trying to ignore their own decision making policies, pick
their own arbitrator (with whom they may already have a
secret side agreement they haven't yet shown me) in secret,
make up the rules for the arbitration as they go along,
and impose them unilaterally and retroactively.

Why does this matter?

ICANN is the poster child for those who believe in privatization
and outsourcing to corporations not just of the provision of
government services but of governance (government decision making) itself.

Authority to set policy for the Internet has been handed over by the USA
Federal government to a private California corporation. In ICANN's
corporate world, corporate bylaws have replaced laws requiring
open meetings, freedom of information, and due process. And arbitration by other
private corporations has replaced law enforcement and appellate justice in
the world of fee-based corporate "justice".

As a private corporation, ICANN is exempt from open
meetings laws, public records laws, the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA), and other "sunshine"
laws used by journalists and the public to obtain
information about government policy-making activities. Journalists'
and others' ability to observe and report on entities
like ICANN, to which policy-making authority has
been delegated, depends instead on enforcement of contracts and
bylaws that guarantee access.

I have attempted to
use ICANN's bylaws on transparency, and ICANN's
contracts with the government of the USA promising
transparency, to observe meetings and obtain
documents. When my requests for access were denied, I
have attempted to use ICANN's bylaws on oversight, and
ICANN's contracts promising the government of the USA that
ICANN would provide such an oversight mechanism,
to obtain an "independent review", by a panel of
arbitrators, of whether ICANN has complied with the
commitments to transparency in its own rules and contracts.

In this context, my challenge as a journalist to ICANN's secrecy
and failure to follow its own rules has become the test case of
press freedom and democracy in the brave new world of governance
by corporation. Its results should be, and I think will be, closely
watched as evidence of whether any sort of justice, accountability, or
transparency is possible in such a framework.

As a secondary but significant matter of concern for
the rights and independence of journalists, ICANN
has delegated to airlines and the travel industry the authority
to determine which journalists reporting on those industries
are legitimate. "Aviation media" are eligible to register
.aero domain names, but only if they "promote" the
industry. No critics or muckrakers need apply. SITA
promised ICANN that there would be a policy-making body
for .aero on which aviation media would be represented,
but SITA instead has taken it upon itself to "represent"
journalists, and ICANN has allowed this breach of contract.
Similarly, "travel media" are allowed to register in .travel, but
only if they are deemed to be legitimate by TTPC, an
industry body in which they have no representation.

And ICANN itself has demonstrated the problems in allowing
the subject of the reporting to decide who to allow to report on its activities,
refusing to recognize me as a journalist,
because of my critical and investigative reporting.

As for the specific top-level domain names that ICANN
has created for the travel industry, why should anyone care that the
Internet is being hijacked by commercial interests?

The issue is, in part, whether the Internet will be governed
democratically or ruled by money and back-room cronyism. It's also about
whether we should have top-level domain names for sectors of
activity -- open to everyone with a stake in those activities -- or solely
for industries and commercial interests. Will the Internet travel
namespace be a virtual community of travellers, or a domain where -- as in a
speech I heard a while back by the then-president of one of the largest
Internet travel agencies -- "interactivity" and "participation" will be
limited to the opportunity to click on the "buy" button?

Under the scheme that has been approved and allowed to be put into effect,
travellers have no say in .travel or .aero policy making, and only
commercial users of the Internet are permitted in .travel -- no travel
journals, photos, or other personal or non-commercial uses.

The sponsors of this proposal say the best way to
protect consumers is to give control to the travel industry. I don't think so.
Neither did the consultants hired by ICANN to evaluate
the .travel and other sTLD applications, who twice
recommended against approval of .travel under industry-only sponsorship
-- first in
2000 and again in 2004 --
for almost exactly this reason.

All of this, I have come to realize, is typical of how ICANN operates.
ICANN has no organizational culture of respect for process or
procedural rules, and no appreciation for the fact that "democracy"
is a process. A benevolent despot, or an enlightened technocrat,
is not a democracy, no matter how wise or popular their decisions.

ICANN has bylaws that require openness and transparency
(the counterpart in the ICANN context of the Freedom of Information Act and similar laws)
and that require ICANN to have specified accountability and review mechanisms
(the counterpart in the ICANN context of the U.S. Administrative Procedure Act).
Those provisions were included in ICANN's bylaws as a condition of the U.S.
government's willingness to delegate decision-making power to ICANN,
under contracts between ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce that require
ICANN to operate in accordance with those bylaws. Perhaps more importantly,
those provisions were included in ICANN's bylaws because of the belief that
transparency, accountability, and due process will result in better decisions.

As a journalist and a believer in democracy, I think that those who
wrote and approved ICANN's bylaws were right. Democracy, or the lack therefo, lies
in the process, not just the results. But many ICANN insiders and
observers disagree. They believe that "better" decisions (where "better"
is often measured by their personal or corporate financial interest) will result
if meetings are held behind closed doors, documents are kept secret, or decisions are
discussed on private e-mail lists before the pro forma public meetings.
Other people simply don't care about the process, and base their opinion of
ICANN solely on whether they agree with the outcomes.

Even if it were correct (which I don't think it is), belief that decision-making
would benefit from closed meetings or from consideration of documents and records
withheld from public disclosure is, at most, an argument that might be made in
favor of a proposal to amend ICANN's transparency bylaws, not a valid
justification for ICANN to ignore its cureent bylaws.

In practice, as result of this attitude that only the final decision matters,
ICANN can't even be said to "make up the rules as it goes along". Rather, ICANN has no rules.
ICANN feels free to ignore anything it has previously said, including the general
procedural rules in its bylaws and specific procedures laid out for particular decisions.
The defining characteristic of the ICANN process is that all decisions are ad hoc.

In this context, anyone like me who suggests that ICANN has any duty to comply
with its own (or any other) rules, or who tries to evalaute ICANN's complinace
wuith the specific terms of its own rules, appears crazy. The fact that what I am doing
is so unusual as to easy to characterized as "crazy" is a measure of how alien
transparency, accountability, or democracy are to ICANN's behavioral norms.

What do other people think about my request for independent review of
ICANN's (lack of) transparency and due process?

7 December 2006:
"[T]he message sent to the community here is, if you dare to ... try to exercise your rights
under the bylaws, and if you ... quote chapter and verse, people are going to try to
paint you as a nut.... I believe the IRP is not properly constituted. I believe his argument
on that is legally correct."

26 July 2006:
"Ed Hasbrouck [has] made heroic efforts to try to invoke that [independent review] process,
and been rebuffed at every turn by contradictory, and I have to say mendacious, statements
by the ICANN counsel."

24 April 2006:
"[E]ven at this late date, ICANN retains the power to shock"

5 February 2006:
"Mr. Cerf, I'm here to tell you again that
someone in the ICANN organization is doing something so boneheaded
in its treatment of Ed Hasbrouck's request for a fair hearing that
it can only hurt you, whatever it is you are trying to accomplish."

12 December 2005:
"If you are new to ICANN, it will be hard to
believe just how much ICANN has fought ... to avoid any external
check, no matter how frail, on its activities."

Kieren McCarthy (the comments below were made while he was a freelance investigative journalist;
he was later hired by ICANN as "Manager, Public Participation")

2 October 2006:
"Freelance journalist Edward Hasbrouck has been fighting with ICANN for nearly two years to have
his review request processed, and has been purposefully blocked, stymied, and ignored every step
of the way."

21 September 2006:
"ICANN has done everything it is power to make this review impossible to start off.
Just ask Edward Hasbrouck."

29 March 2006:
"Mr Hasbrouck comes in the best tradition of
the unshakeable investigative journalist and, having been dismissed,
has pushed to the very edge the requirement for ICANN to offer an
independent review of its processes and decisions.... I know a lot of
people who will be supporting him in that effort."

3 December 2005:
"Mr. Hasbrouck's coherence should trouble
the ICANN Board enormously. Especially since the more they get in
his way, the more this is going to become a story in itself."

Bret Fausett
(member, ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee)

16 March 2006:
"In spite of being bullied by ICANN's counsel and
ignored by ICANN's Board, Mr. Hasbrouck has filed timely and
important requests for ... independent review."

19 January 2006:
"We all need to stand on the side of Edward Hasbrouck on this issue."

Karl Auerbach (former elected member, ICANN Board of Directors; maker of another
pending request for independent review of an ICANN decision)

3 December 2005:
"ICANN is trying to skulk around and hide.... I think Ed deserves his review."

17 November 2006:
"ICANN has been stringing Ed Hasbrouck along for years. The ICANN process reminds me of
something and someone - John Ehrlichman, an adviser to Richard Nixon, whose method of
dealing with people who raised troublesome issues was to ignore them and leave them
'twisting, slowly, slowly in the wind'."

24 April 2006:
"If only various of the many ICANN critics could be as tenacious as Edward Hasbrouck
in going after a specific topic, surely ICANN's house of cards would have long
since toppled."

18 January 2008:
"I have often said ... that if we had an Edward Hasbrouck for each ICANN issue
we would have a much better ICANN. I don't know of any single individual who has
been so tenacious at going after ICANN."

What can I do to help?

Write a letter of support to ICANN's
Board of Directors.
Ask them to begin a public policy-development process to designate an
independent review provider (IRP),
and set up procedures for independent review. Tell them they can't just
make up the
arbitration procedures or pick an arbitrator in secret. In the meantime, ask
them to postpone any further
implementation of their decision on .travel until the independent review
procedures
are adopted, an independent review provider is chosen, and they receive
the recommendation of the independent review panel. Send your
letter to
ICANN's Corporate Secretary and General Counsel, John O. Jeffrey,
john.jeffrey@icann.org, with a
request that he forward it
to each member of the Board of Directors.

Send me money by
Paypal
or by check in U.S. dollars payable to Edward Hasbrouck, 1130 Treat Ave.,
San Francisco, CA 94110, USA.
All funds received will be used toward my costs of arbitration and my
expenses for reporting on these issues. ICANN has suggested that filing fees alone
for arbitration on their terms might be US$3250. I haven't yet gotten
enough information from ICANN to estimate the expenses of the
arbitration (for which I might be liable if I am unsuccessful),
but I assume that it could be much more than that. US$1000-2000 would allow
me to attend the next ICANN meeting. (Each ICANN meeting
is held at a different location, never twice in a row on the same continent,
and these meetings are almost impossible to participate in or report on,
especially in the face of ICANN's
obstruction of journalists,
without being physically present.)

Get your organization to support the campaign for ICANN
accountability and transparency. I'm particularly interested
in support from groups able to assist with organizing, publicity, outreach,
fundraising,
and legal work in preparing for arbitration (or potentially, if arbitration
continues to be denied, litigation). Among other things, organizations with
a stake in ICANN actions and procedures (including, for example, journalists'
rights and "good governance" organizations), are eligible to apply to participate
in ICANN, although only in an advisory capacity, as
at-large structures.
If you're able to help in any way, please get in touch.

Spread the word, especially to groups and individuals
concerned with the rights of travellers and consumers, journalists' rights,
open government, open meetings, freedom of information, public records,
procedural due process, oversight of decision-making, and the preservation
of those rights in the face of the privatization of governance.

History of ICANN's actions on .aero, .travel, and my
requests for reconsideration and independent review

ICANN and top-level domain names for travel

Travel and the Internet go hand-in-hand. That should be no surprise: the
movement of information has always paralleled the movement of people, power,
and money. Historically, global electronic networking
actually was pioneered by the travel industry long before the Internet existed.
Today, travel reservations, especially airline ticket sales, are the
leading edge of e-commerce.

The Internet might seem to provide an alternative to travel, or to render
it unnecessary. But the reverse has been the case. Those who predicted that
the Internet would be the death of travel ... have been proven dead
wrong. Travel ... is the largest seller on the Internet. The
present Internet age is distinguished not just by ease of communications,
but by personal mobility and opportunities for travel unprecedented in human
history. And for more and more people, long distance communications
and travel are part and parcel of the same style of life, business,
and leisure.

E-mail, instant messaging, electronic chat rooms, Internet discussion
groups and mailing lists, Internet phone calls and video conferences, and of
course Internet personal advertisements and virtual match-making services
haven't replaced face-to-face meetings and personal experience of distant
places. Rather, Internet-fueled globalization of human and business
relationships has driven the need and desire for more people to travel
further more often, for business and pleasure alike.

Given this context, it's not surprising that some of the first proposals
to ICANN for new top-level Internet domains were related to travel.
And from the start, my Web site (including the
section of my blog
on Internet domain names) and my e-mail newsletter have provided in-depth
investigative and consumer reporting on these proposals and their implications
for travellers who use the Internet.

The problem isn't with the basic idea of travel-specific Internet
domain names, which I have consistently supported.

The problem is that Internet governing body ICANN has handed over control
of the Internet travel namespace to front groups for the interests of
airlines and the travel "industry", to the
exclusion (and the detriment) of the travelling public and "civil society"
organizations and communities concerned with travel. And my attempts to
investigate and report on this story have led to a
major test case of the right of public access to ICANN decision-making, and of
whether there is any oversight or accountability of ICANN to independent review.

The Internet was originally controlled
by the government of the USA. Beginning in 1998, much of the
USA government's authority to set policy and make decisions about
the Internet was delegated (through a series of
contracts of dubious validity),
to ICANN, a California non-profit corporation
created in 1998 specifically to enable the privatization of Internet
governance. ICANN itself is governed (under the laws of California and
the USA, ICANN's corporate charter, and its bylaws) by a Board of Directors.

(This isn't the place for a complete history of ICANN and its
relationship to the Internet and the government of the USA.
Unfortunately, many of the organizations, acronyms, and terminology
referred to here and in my correspondence with ICANN are likely to be
unfamiliar to readers who haven't been following ICANN, Internet governance,
and domain name politics. If you are new to this issue, see these
background articles for an introduction to ICANN's
history, activities, and procedures, and some of the legal issues they raise.)

The 2000 round of new TLD applications:
SITA's proposal for .aero approved, but not IATA's proposal for .travel

In 2000, ICANN issued a public request for proposals, for a US$50,000
non-refundable fee per application, from would-be sponsors of new top-level Internet
domain names (TLD's) to be added to the existing TLD's like .com, .org,
.edu, .mil (USA military), .int (international organizations), and so forth.

Almost all of the world's airlines
are members of IATA, which generally describes itself as a
"trade association". It is more accurately described as a cartel,
since it openly engages in the fixing of certain "industry fares", and
airlines in the USA require special legal exemption from USA
anti-trust law (which they have been granted by Congress) to participate
in IATA "traffic conferences".

Both SITA's proposal for .air and IATA's proposal for .travel
were for "sponsored" TLD's. An "unsponsored" TLD like .com
is open to anyone who wants to sue it for a legal purpose. But
for a "sponsored" TLD, ICANN explicitly delegates to the sponsor
of the TLD the right to control who is, and who is not, allowed
to register domain names in that TLD, and which domain names they
are allowed to register.

The consultants hired by ICANN to evaluate the TLD applications
in 2000 reported
that, "The evaluation team cannot
conclude, at this juncture, that IATA has demonstrated that it
is or would be broadly representative of the diverse global travel industry."

Vocal objections to IATA's proposal to sponsor .travel were
also raised by those travel agents
who work for consumers rather than travel suppliers, and who feared
that having their Internet domain names controlled by the airlines
would give airlines a means to force travel agents to put airlines'
interests ahead of consumers' interests -- or lose their .travel domain names.

For these reasons, IATA's application for .travel
was, quite rightly, passed over by ICANN's Board of Directors
when it was considered in late 2000. The airlines that make up IATA aren't
representative of the diversity of the travel industry, much less of all
those outside the travel "industry" with an interest in travel.

SITA's application was approved, although ICANN changed the name
of the TLD from .air (as proposed by SITA) to .aero.

In its application to ICANN, which I supported, SITA promised,
explicitly that .aero and its policy-making would be open to the
aviation industry, its customers, and its critics alike; that it would be
operated for the benefit of the entire community of entities with an interest in air
transportation (not just the industry providing air transportation);
and that consumer advocates, the aviation media, and unions of aviation
workers would be represented in the body SITA would create to set
policies for .aero (such as who would be allowed to register
.aero domain names, and which names they could register).

ICANN's bylaws
require it to "operate to the maximum extent feasible in
an open and transparent manner". Instead, following approval of .aero
by ICANN's Board of Directors, the rules for .aero were drafted by
ICANN staff in secret meetings with SITA. These rules differ radically
from the original proposal, in that only suppliers of travel services,
not consumer advocates, are allowed to register
.aero domain names. Consumers and travellers aren't welcome. Members
of the "aviation media" can register .aero domain names, but only if
they "promote" air transportation. No critics or muckrakers need apply.

SITA's chief negotiator with ICANN in those secret sessions, Rosa Delgado,
told me in an interview
just after the agreement was made public (which I reported at the
time in my newsletter and on my Web site, and later in my comments
to the public forum during ICANN's June 2003 meeting in Montréal),
that ICANN's chief negotiator, Louis Touton,
not only drafted most of the terms of the sponsorship agreement
and forced them on SITA, but insisted on excluding some groups
of stakeholders from eligibility to register .aero domains
in order to be able to put them in .travel, even
though Ms. Delgado and SITA "fought really hard" to argue that
they were included in the .aero proposal as originally approved
by ICANN's Board of Directors.

The secretly-negotiated agreement for the creation of .aero
under SITA's sponsorship, with the new and narrower terms of eligibility,
was made public in late 2001 under a strange procedure that allowed it
to go into effect "without objection" by ICANN's Board of Directors
and without any Board debate or public hearing. I formally requested that
ICANN's Board of Directors reconsider this decision, but that request was denied.

At that time, ICANN's bylaws
required it to have "policies and procedures for
independent third-party review of Board actions alleged by an affected
party to have violated the Corporation's articles of incorporation or bylaws",
as I believe it did in the secret negotiations with SITA
on the .aero agreement. If ICANN had actually had such an independent
review body in place, I would have requested that it review the
.aero agreement and the process by which it was adopted. But ICANN never
appointed the independent review panel required by the bylaws then in effect.
With no further appeal possible, .aero went into use in early 2002.

SITA promised ICANN that it would establish open, participatory
decision-making procedures for .aero. But SITA has reneged completely
on those promises, as I pointed out in my
comments
in the public forum during ICANN's March 2003 meeting in Rio de Janeiro,
and in my 2006 comments
on SITA's pending application for renewal of its agreement with ICANN to sponsor
.aero. SITA has abrogated to itself the task of "representing" airline
passengers, aviation workers and their unions, the aviation media, and most
other stakeholders in air transportation. And policy for .aero
has been determined entirely in secret.

Despite my having repeatedly and directly brought these issues to the attention
of ICANN and its Board of Directors, ICANN has done nothing to enforce its
contract with SITA, or to sanction SITA for noncompliance.

The initial contract delegating authority over .aero was for a 5-year term,
from 17 December 2001 through 17 December 2006. SITA applied to renew the sponsorship agreement, and
that renewal application is now under consideration (in secret, of course, like most ICANN
decision-making) by ICANN.

I pointed out in formal
comments to ICANN that the .aero agreement had been violated, and should not be renewed.
In response, response, SITA
claimed that no individual stakeholder has ever contacted the (unnamed) person
SITA now claims to have designated to represent them in .aero decision-making.
Scarcely surprising, since it is impossible to determine
from SITA's Web site or any other public source who that purported representative
is, or even that they exist, or what issues or proposals for .aero policies or
decisions are under consideration.

On 30 June 2006, ICANN's Board of Directors
decided that my
comments did not "raise a
substantial question about whether renewal of SITA's agreement would be in the
best interest of the sponsored TLD community and the global Internet community",
and voted unanimously and without debate to authorize
ICANN's staff "to enter into negotiations with SITA for a renewal of the .AERO Sponsorship Agreement."

The original sponsorship contract would have required a formal review by
ICANN's staff, and a further opportunity for public comment, if my comments or
any others had raised such a "substantial question" -- regardless of how ICANN's
Board of Directors or staff believed that question should have been answered.
In the absence of any debate, it's unclear from the
transcript
whether the members of the Board of Directors understood that the issue properly before the
Board was whether the comments raised, as a threshhold showing, a "substantial
question", and not how to answer that question. Nor is there any indication of
what they would have considered to constitute a "substantial question".

The delegation by ICANN to SITA of authority over .aero
expired
with the expiration of the original 5-year contract 17 December 2006.
In June 2006, in response to my
comments
in the public forum
on ICANN's registry continuity plans, ICANN
revealed
that they had secretly "granted" an amendment and extension of the agreement
for SITA to sponsor .aero. But any such secret "grant", without the
procedures required by the Bylaws
(notice of the proposal, public comment, notice of the Board
of Directors agenda, Board vote, etc.) is null and void, and should be reconsidered
"de novo", according to the procedures required by the Bylaws.

In December 2008, following secret negotiations with SITA, ICANN
finally posted
a proposed new agreement providing for ".aero" to be transferred to a different one of SITA's several
corporate incarnations, this one a Delaware (USA) corporation. The proposal was for a 10-year agreement,
with a provision for presumptive renewal in perpetuity. The only
public comments were in opposition
to the proposal: my objection on
the basis of lack of transparency of the process, and an
objection to the "presumptive renewal" clause.
No public support was expressed for the proposal. Nevertheless, ICANN's Board of Directors
approved the new ".aero" agreement
unanimously, by voice vote, at another of their telephone "meetings" (closed to the public and the press,
in violation of their transparency bylaw) on 3 February 2009.

The 2003-2004 round of new TLD applications:
The transition of .travel from IATA to Tralliance and TTPC

The .aero TLD remains little used, even by the airlines who backed the proposal.
But ICANN's approval of "aero" set the precedent for the handover of
travel-related or sector-specific sponsored TLD's to the control
of industry, to the exclusion of public or civil society interests.
That precedent was eventually followed with .travel, although it
took several more years and required at least superficial concessions
by IATA and a change of formal sponsorship of the proposal.

ICANN's public position was (and still is) that the TLD applications
passed over in 2000, including IATA's application for .travel,
were not "rejected" but remained pending. To answer the
objections from travel agents, ICANN's consultants, and ICANN's Board
of Directors as to IATA's ability to represent .travel stakeholders
other than airlines, IATA began taking steps to create a new front group to
sponsor .travel that would at least appear to represent a broader
range of travel-related businesses.

Following a meeting 26 November 2001 at IATA headquarters in Montréal,
IATA announced the formation of a Travel Partnership Corporation
(TTPC), ostensibly to ensure that .travel is operated for the benefit of travellers.
But it was all a sham; the only real purpose of the "partnership" was as a
front for the interests of IATA, to make IATA more acceptable to ICANN.
Only one of the 25 members of the .travel governing board is supposed
to be a consumer representative, none were appointed to the initial
board, and, as of 2006, none has yet been appointed to the board.

After I called IATA on its role in creating the Travel Partnership
Corporation, IATA and TTPC shifted to working through a joint venture with the
Tralliance (for "travel alliance")
Corporation. In 2003-2004, when ICANN issued a request for a second round of
proposals for new sponsored TLD's, the Tralliance Corp. and TTPC
submitted their own new
application
to sponsor a .travel TLD.

Tralliance was supposedly an independent company, but its initial
staff included former key staff of IATA's .travel project as well
long-time cronies of key personnel at ICANN.

In February 2003, Tralliance concluded a
secret deal
(not disclosed in its application to ICANN for .travel, and not
made public until much later, after ICANN's Board of Directors
had already given the
first stage of approval to its application for .travel)
for a sale of Tralliance Corp. to TheGlobe.com
(also known as Voiceglo.com) --
contingent on ICANN approval of its .travel application.

It's not clear what relationship TTPC and Tralliance/TheGlobe.com/Voiceglo.com
have today with IATA. (They do have some sort of contract related to .travel,
but it remains secret.) But the fix had been in with ICANN for years with respect to
.travel.

As was described to me by Rosa Delgado,
SITA's principal negotiator with ICANN for .aero, a back-room deal
existed was made at least as early as 2001 by ICANN staff and their industry
cronies to approve IATA's sponsorship of .travel
in the next round of new top-level domains. In late 2001, Ms. Delgado
told me ICANN staff (who are, by all accounts, the
real decision makers) were already talking about the award of .travel to
IATA as a fait accompli -- even though at that time
ICANN's evaluation team had recommended against giving .travel
to IATA, and IATA's application for .travel had officially been
passed over and denied reconsideration by ICANN's Board of Directors.

When ICANN issued a request for a second round of proposals
for more new TLD's in 2003-2004, the terms of the request were such
as to favor IATA and its front groups,
Tralliance and TTPC, on every point. Was that coincidence or conspiracy?
Who knows, since the terms of the request for proposals were drafted in
secret by ICANN staff, in consultation with we know not whom.

Tralliance and TTPC, as expected, filed a
new application
in March 2004 to sponsor a .travel TLD. In an elaborate shell game,
the for-profit Tralliance Corp. asked that .travel be created and delegated
to them, but with a tenuous (and probably powerless) relationship to the "non-profit"
TTPC providing a veneer of greater legitimacy. On its face, this application
was entirely independent of IATA's application for "travel", which was
still officially "pending" although not approved. There was no mention in the public
portion of the Tralliance/TTPC application to ICANN of the secret 2002 deal
between IATA's and the TTPC, or the February 2004 deal, less than a month
before their application to ICANN, between Tralliance and TTPC. (ICANN
still hasn't responded to my questions
as to when ICANN itself learned of these secret agreements between the
ostensibly "independent" parties involved in the two .travel proposals.)

I objected
to the 2004 .travel proposal, as others did, on the grounds that Tralliance and TTPC were no
more representative than IATA (or any other industry body) of travellers,
journalists reporting on travel, or the general public, and that the
proposal included none of the provisions for openness, transparency,
due process, and public participation in decision making required by
ICANN's rules.

Although my request to observe their meetings (as would have been feasible,
and as I was entitled to do under ICANN's bylaws requiring them to "operate to
the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner") was ignored,
the consultants ICANN hired to evaluate the applications
agreed with my substantive objections,
at least on my first point: ICANN's consulting evaluators "were not persuaded that .travel
met sufficient of the selection criteria to warrant the application proceeding":

While the applicant does a very thorough job of defining a community, we did
not believe that the community is consistent in breadth with the name string
.travel. Rather, the community defined is limited to the commercial
providers of travel services.... Hence, the delegation of the entire sTLD
namespace .travel by ICANN to this Sponsor would not result in
appropriately representative policy formulation.... The application and
supporting material indicate broad support from the travel industry...
However, we are concerned ... that even this breadth of [industry] support
is not sufficient to sustain the designation .travel, which has both
commercial and non-commercial aspects.... The stated function of the TLD is
to serve the global travel industry. However, the implication of the chosen
namestring .travel extends well beyond commercial travel services. For
example, ... the applicant indicated that individuals with an interest in
travel would be excluded from registration, as would providers of
travel-related products. While there is reason to consider such potential
registrants as outside the of the travel services industry, they certainly
fall within the general notion of "travel".... Furthermore, the public
comment forum is particularly ambivalent about support for .travel, most
notably because of lack of public interest representation ... and whether it
is representative of that community.

ICANN kept their "independent" evaluators' report and recommendation
against awarding .travel to Tralliance/TTPC secret for more than a year.
Meanwhile, ICANN's Board of Directors, for reasons that remain entirely secret,
decided at a so-called meeting
(closed to journalists and the public, in violation of their bylaws on transparency)
in October 2004 to overrule their consultants' recommendation and authorize
ICANN's president and general counsel to work out the details of ICANN's
delegation of .travel to Tralliance/TTPC in another series of closed negotiating
sessions (also in violation of ICANN's bylaws on transparency).

That agreement was duly and secretly negotiated, and presented at the last minute
(without the advance notice and public comment period required by ICANN's bylaws,
and with portions of its terms still being kept secret) for final approval by ICANN's
Board of Directors at their meeting in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in April 2005.

I didn't (and still don't) know what was really going on behind the scenes, but
it was clearly not in the interests of travellers, consumers, or the public.

As the secret negotiations with ICANN moved toward completion,
I continued to report on what made it into the public record, and to ask
questions about:

The real parties in control of Tralliance (and to be in control of .travel);

The (in)ability of the travel industry to represent travellers, workers
in travel-related businesses, travel journalists, or non-commercial
entities interested in travel;

ICANN's (mis)treatment of me as a journalist who reports too many critical
details and asks too many probing questions; and

ICANN's systematic and thoroughgoing failure to comply with its own bylaws,
particularly those on openness and transparency.

ICANN revealed a further web of secret contracts between IATA, Tralliance,
and TTPC on 2 April 2005, less than a week before ICANN's final decision on .travel,
when ICANN released a
contract
between Tralliance and the TTPC as an appendix to the (secretly-negotiated)
draft agreement
between Tralliance and ICANN for sponsorship of .travel.
But ICANN continued to ignore most of my questions and requests for
documents and access to meetings, going to increasingly
ludicrous lengths
to keep me out of their press conferences.

In detailed comments
to ICANN's public forum on 7 April 2005, I reiterated the specific
requests I had made, and which ICANN had ignored, for access as
a journalist and a member of the public, in accordance
with ICANN's bylaws on openness and transparency, to ICANN meetings
and documents. I pointed out my exclusion from ICANN's press conference
(also in violation of ICANN's bylaws), and ICANN's failure to provide
the advance notice, explanation of the reasons for the proposal,
and 21-day public comment period on the proposed .travel agreement
(all also as required by ICANN's bylaws). I advised that, if ICANN's
Board of Directors proceeded to consider or approve the .travel agreement
during its meeting the next day, I would request that any such "decision"
be referred to an independent review panel -- as also
provided for
by ICANN's bylaws -- charged with determining whether the decision
had been made in a manner consistent with ICANN's bylaws
on openness and transparency.

I wasn't surprised that ICANN's Board of Directors ignored me,
and proceeded on 8 April 2005 to approve an agreement (portions of which were kept secret)
to create a .travel TLD and delegate authority over it to Tralliance and TTPC.
ICANN shouldn't have been surprised that, as I had said I would, I immediately
submitted a formal request to ICANN
that it refer its decision on the .travel agreement to an independent
review panel, in accordance with its
bylaws.
I also requested -- as also provided for by ICANN's bylaws -- that ICANN's
Board of Directors (which was still in session in its meeting
when they received my request) stay their decision pending
the recommendation of the independent review panel.

ICANN's bylaws require it to "operate to the maximum extent feasible in
an open and transparent manner". This requirement has been ignored in the
process of ICANN approval of .travel,
and this failure to comply with its own procedural requirements
for openness and transparency is the basis for my request for
independent review of ICANN's decision on .travel.

In a separate set of requests, I've also exhausted ICANN's internal
procedures for review of its decisions by ICANN's
pretender to the title of ombudsman,
and by a committee of the ICANN Board of Directors. The Committee on
Reconsideration secretly denied
my request on the basis of a secret recommendation by the person
claiming to act as Ombudsman (despite
never having been properly appointed),
in violation of ICANN's rules requiring
the committee to base its decisions solely on "the public written record"
and in a demonstration of gross professional malfeasance by the Ombudsman in
deliberately (and successfully) attempting to influence the committee
to take this improper action.

Since the decision on .aero in 2001 (at which time ICANN's bylaws required
ICANN to have its own Independent Review Panel, which ICANN never actually appointed),
ICANN has amended its bylaws to require that "ICANN shall have in place a
separate process for independent third-party review of Board actions
alleged by an affected party to be inconsistent with the Articles of
Incorporation or Bylaws". But so far as has been publicly disclosed, ICANN
does not in fact have in place any such process.

ICANN has never publicly acknowledged or acted on my request for a stay.
Instead, they ignored my request entirely while they did everything possible
to put their questioned decision into effect, so that it would be as hard
as possible to undo, even if that's what the independent review panel
eventually recommends.

On 5 May 2005, ICANN and Tralliance signed off on their agreement for the
creation and sponsorship of .travel (portions of which still remain secret),
just a week later on 12 may 2005 TheGlobe.com purchased Tralliance
-- exercising its option contingent on the agreement with ICANN.

TheGlobe.com/Voiceglo.com has been kept from bankruptcy only by a series of
convertible loans from "E & C Capital Partners II, LLP",
a partnership whose principals Michael Egan and Ed Cespedes are
also the principal owners of Florida-based tour operator
Certified Vacations.
By "calling" those notes and converting them to stock, Egan and
Cespedes could at any time take control of TheGlobe.com/Voiceglo.com,
its subsidiary Tralliance Corp., its financial captive the
Travel Partnership Corp., and (subject to ICANN's approval,
if ICANN asserted its contractual right to approve
the transfer of control of the domain) the .travel domain.

So far as I can tell, ICANN took no action whatsoever on my
request for independent review and stay pending independent review
until almost 8 months after my initial request. In December 2005, I went
to Vancouver to report in person on ICANN's annual meeting, which was
ICANN's only public meeting in North America in more than 2 years.
Only then, after I "stood up at the public
forum and shamed them into responding", as
one observer put it,
did ICANN agree that, "we will refer your
complaint to an Independent Review Panel",
as they were required to have done when they first received it.

Six weeks after this public "agreement", ICANN's General Counsel sent me a
bizarre letter
saying that my request wasn't worthy of being forwarded
to an Independent Review Panel.

ICANN didn't respond to those questions. Instead they went to extremes
to exclude me from the press conferences during their meeting in New Zealand at the
end of March, 2006. (Among other things, they claimed that
the Internet isn't a legitimate medium for journalism about
the making of Internet policy!) But in response to an unprecedented showing of
public support for my request for independent review, the Chairperson of
the Board of Directors, Dr. Vint Cerf of Google,
put forward a novel and unsupported claim that a decision made during an earlier secret
telephone conference of ICANN's Board, based on a secret proposal,
authorizing a contract which (if it exists at all) remains secret, had fulfilled
ICANN's obligation under its Bylaws to designate an independent review provider (IRP)
and approve IRP procedures through a maximally open and transparent,
bottom-up, consensus process of policy development.

Dr. Cerf "recommended" that I contact the
International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR),
to "initiate" my request for independent review. (Which request I had already initiated,
in actuality, almost a year earlier.) ICDR isn't really so international at all: it's
an operating division of the American Arbitration Association. And none of its standard
procedures would fit the
requirements of ICANN's Bylaws for independent review.

Moreover, when I contacted ICDR for comment,
they said they had never heard of ICANN,
and they have no procedures applicable to independent review of decisions
by ICANN. And in order to make a request to them for arbitration, I'd have
to provide them with a contract which, if it exists at all, ICANN has
refused to provide me, in spite of a year of explicit requests.

In June 2007, ICANN posted as a fait accompli links to ICDR as the purported
Independent Review Provider, and new procedures for independent review, as well as proposed
new rules for (non)disclosure of information. But there was no mention of how, when, or by whom
these newly-posted policies and procedures had been adopted, and no indication that
the decision-making process satisfied the requirements of ICANN's Bylaws.

As I pointed out in comments and a
follow-up, ICANN's
"Documentary Information Disclosure Policy" (DIDP) fails to satisfy the requirement of ICANN's Bylaws
for the maximum extent feasible of transparency. ICANN published that policy without a formal policy
development process, and I have requested that,
if ICANN considers it to be a policy, it be referred to an independent review panel charged with determining whether
it is consistent with ICANN's Bylaws. That request has, of course, been entirely ignored.

But in the meantime, to test that policy,
I made renewed formal requests in 2009 for any records of (1) ICANN decisions to designate an independent review provider or
approve independent review policies or fees, and (2) appointment by ICANN of an Ombudsman.

With regard to independent review, ICANN responded
in April 2009 with (1) an explicit admission that ICANN has a secret side agreement
with ICDR, its claimed "independent" review provider (which agreement, according to ICDR's rules, I would
have to provide a copy of in order to initiate arbitration by ICDR), and
an explicit categorical refusal to disclose that secret contract, and (2) an explicit admission that ICANN has not, in fact,
conducted any policy development process for independent review since the independent review
Bylaws were amended in 2002, and has no independent review policies:

ICANN/ICDR Agreement: ... ICANN does not make public its individual vendor contracts.
Further, individual contracts of this type are protected from disclosure under the
balancing test outlined within the DIDP.... Allowing public disclosure will impede ICANN's ability
to negotiate and enter into contracts with persons and entities not wishing to make
their business dealings open to the public, which will greatly harm the organization
in running its business. Moreover, it is hard to identify what public interest would
be served by the disclosure of the contract. This harm/benefit analysis is sufficient
justification for nondisclosure under the DIDP. ICANN can, however, confirm the existence
of an agreement with the International Centre for Dispute Resolution ("ICDR") as the
Board-designated Independent Review Panel Provider.

ICANN does not currently maintain any "policies" relating to the Independent
Review process...To be clear, since 2002, ICANN has not undertaken any policy actions nor adopted any
policies pursuant to Article III, Section 6 of ICANN's Bylaws to govern the Independent Review Process
or the designation of the Independent Review Panel Provider.

With regard to appointment of an Ombudsman, ICANN responded
in May 2009 that, "Ombudsman was appointed on November 1, 2004, with the appointment consistent with ICANN's Bylaw V." Since that article of the Bylaws requires that an Ombudsman be appointed by the Board of Directors, and since there
was no notice or minutes of a Board meeting on that date, such an appointment could not possibly
have been consistent with those Bylaws. ICANN's Bylaws also provide for any initial
appointment of an Ombudsman to be for 2 years, subject to renewal by the Board. ICANN didn't respond at
all to my request for information about renewal of an Ombudsman's appointment. But a 2-year appointment made in 2004
would, of course, have expired in 2006 unless it had been renewed.

More than five years after my original request for independent review, I still don't know when, if ever, ICANN will
actually designate an independent review provider, or put in place
procedures for independent review of whether their decisions comply with their Bylaws.

Even supporters of privatization of Internet governance have criticized ICANN's
failure to act on my request or allow any independent review of its decisions.
Here's what Network Solutions, LLC, said about it in its
formal comments
to the USA Department of Commerce, 7 July 2006:

To date, however, there is no evidence that this Independent Review procedure is
effective at all inasmuch as this mechanism does not appear to have been allowed
to work by ICANN, essentially obviating its value as a realistic tool for any
challenge of a Board decision. For example, travel expert Ed Hasbrouck initiated
an Independent Review in April 2005.... ICANN did not act on Hasbrouck's Independent
Review request for 8 months. In a January 2006 letter, ICANN General Counsel John
Jeffrey stated that earlier e-mail communications from Mr. Hasbrouck did not
"meet the guidelines" for a formal IRP.... ICANN has failed to demonstrate that
its [independent review] process is viable. Thus, the amended MoU should include
terms that require ... an actual venue for challenging Board decisions. ICANN
should be required to institute a formal, user-friendly process for seeking an
[independent review]. These changes should include enforceable timelines by
which ICANN will respond to and provide a decision on an [independent review] request.

ICANN agrees to (and loses) arbitration with ICM Registry, but still fails to implement its Bylaws and
still stonewalls me and others

One corporation with a financial stake in an ICANN decision, ICM Registry,
has chosen to accept
ICANN's after-the-fact and procedurally-improper "decision" to designate
the ICDR as the Independent Review Provider.

Stuart Lawley says, "I think we are actually the first entity to actually
file an Independent Review Petition. I may be wrong but I think you simply indicated
to ICANN that you wanted one and I guess they just pointed you to the ICDR and sat
and waited for you to file."

This is not correct. I filed a formal request with ICANN. (ICANN didn't "point me
to the ICDR". They ignored me for months, than promised to act on my request,
then didn't act.) ICANN's Bylaws provide that an IRP request be filed with ICANN.
ICANN claims to have adopted procedures for IRP requests to be filed directly
with ICDR, but (1) ICANN has never actually approved such procedures in accordance
with the rules in ICANN's Bylaws for such decisions, and (2) even if they had, they
would not comply with the Bylaws, which provide for filing of IDP requests with ICANN.

As a business, Mr. Lawley and ICM Registry are, understandably, more concerned with a
favorable decision that would allow their business plans to move forward than with
the procedures. They may choose to accept ICANN's (procedurally improper) "decision"
to designate ICDR, and may choose to follow procedures (not in accordance with ICANN's
Bylaws) for filing directly with ICDR, etc. But their willingness to follow those procedures
does not legitimate those procedures, negate the claims of other pending IRP requesters,
or require others to follow them rather than insisting that ICANN actually bring itself into
compliance with the IRP Bylaw by (1) conducting a proper policy development process to
designate an IRP provider and approve IRP procedures, and (2) acting on the outstanding
IRP requests.

Fundamentally ICM Registry's objection is to the substantive outcome of ICANN's
decision, not the process. The IRP request relates to the process, but its main goal
is to overturn the substantive decision. Ultimately, ICANN would be able to accommodate
such an IRP ruling without fundamental or procedural change.

In light of ICM's commercial goals, the cost of an independent review, even at
US$1 million, is small compared to the profits if the IRP rules in ICM Registry's
favor. So ICM Registry has little reason to object to the establishment of IRP
procedures and fees unaffordable to individuals or public interest advocates.

Fundamentally, my objection is to the process, and my goal as a journalist is
change in ICANN's process with respect to openness and transparency. This is
much more threatening to ICANN, since a ruling in my favor by an IRP would
require major change in how ICANN operates. And I cannot afford, and would not
readily "agree" to, expensive procedures. My request is thus much more threatening
to ICANN's established secrecy. Perhaps that is why ICANN has been unable to conduct
the kind of discussions with me about my IRP request that it has apparently been
willing to have with ICM Registry.

Of course, by any interpretation, ICANN has violated its Bylaws by
failing to post the ICM Registry request, or any of the other IRP requests, on the ICANN Web site.

After I made this public comment, ICANN posted
some documents related to ICM Registry's request, but
nothing related to my request or any of the others. As I have
pointed out again in more recent comments to ICANN
ICANN's agreement with ICM Registry to submit a particular matter to a particular arbitration body,
under particular rules, by mutual consent, did not satisfy the requirements of ICANN's Bylaw, and do not relieve
ICANN of its obligation to comply with its Bylaws and to act on my request and the other pending requests for independent review.
For what it's worth, though, the panel of three arbitrators agreed upon by ICANN and ICM Registry eventually
declared
that ICANN's actions in relation to ICM Registry were not in accordance with ICANN Bylaws.

Reiterates its claim that a resolution "adopted" without prior notice during a closed telephone "meeting", which
authorized (but did not require) the approval of a (still secret) contract with ICDR to provide
unspecified independent review services based on a (still secret) proposal, and which was accompanied by a
resolution authorizing continued discussions with other potential providers of such services,
constituted the "designation" of ICDR as ICANN's exclusive provider of independent review services;

Repeats its admission that ICANN "has not undertaken any policy actions nor adopted any policies pursuant
to Article III, Section 6 of ICANN's Bylaws to govern the Independent Review Process or the designation
of the Independent Review Panel Provider";

Falsely claims that, "No...policy development process [was] required for ICANN to designate the ICDR
as the Independent Review Provider", in clear contravention of ICANN's Bylaws;

Makes no mention of ICANN's failure to adopt policies for independent review, claiming that such policies exist
without mentioning whether (or if so, how) they were purportedly approved by ICANN's Board as required
by ICANN's Bylaws;

Entirely ignores all of the specific references in my questions to specific provisions of ICANN's Bylaws
regarding the designation of an independent review provider, the approval of procedures for independent review,
and the approval of ICANN policies in general and policies purporting to impose fees in particular;

Ignores the secret contract which ICANN has admitted exists between ICANN and ICDR, the existence
of which would disqualify ICDR from consideration as an "independent" review provider even
were ICDR now proposed for designation as such in accordance with ICANN's Bylaws;

Falsely claims that, "No person or entity other than ICM Registry has ever initiated a Request for
Independent Review pursuant to the required rules and procedures", when in fact (a) no procedures for independent review
had been properly adopted by ICANN, in acocrdance with the Bylaws then in effect, at the time of either of my
requets for indepnedent review, and (b) the previous requests for indpendent review by others, whihc ICANN
has nebver acted on, were made in accordance with the provisions of the Bylaws in effect at the time they were made;

Falsely claims that, "since 2005, ICANN's General Counsel has been offering to assist Mr. Hasbrouck in clarifying
the process for initiating an Independent Review", when in fact neither ICANN's General Counsel nor ICANN's
Board of Directors has ever taken or returned any of my phone calls,
met with me, offered to meet with we, responded to my written requests for meetings, or placed my requests
on the agenda of any public meeting of any ICANN body, and on the one occasion when I attended an ICANN
meeting and sought to speak to ICANN's General Counsel, he literally ran away from me across the room to
avoid engaging in any conversation with me whatsoever;

States that "ICANN's General Counsel's Office sent another letter inviting Mr. Hasbrouck to
participate in a conference call with ICANN and the ICDR to assist in clarifying what steps are
required to initiate an Independent Review. That invitation was not accepted.", ignoring the fact that
(a) ICANN has never designated ICDR as its independent review provider in accordance with ICANN's
policy development and decision-making Bylaws, rendering a meeting with ICDR irrelevant to ICANN action on my request;
and (b) ICANN's General Counsel's Office has never accepted any of my phone calls, returned any of my
telephone messages, or talked with me in person or offered to so so, and has ignored my
repeated and explicit written requests
for a meeting to discuss my requests for independent review.

But I haven't given up. This is a work in progress. ICANN tries to ignore me, but I'm not going to
let the ICANN parade pass by without holding up a sign that says, "The emperor has no clothes." (See
my blog
and my articles from "ICANN Watch"
for the latest updates I haven't had time to add to this page.)

Links to documents and background material

Much of the jargon in the articles linked below may be unfamiliar to
readers who haven't been following ICANN and domain name politics.
What's needed, perhaps, is an "Internet Governance for Dummies", but
so far as I know it doesn't yet exist. I would welcome reader
suggestions for other background references.

Response to the ICANN Ombudsman Blog
(comment to ICANN Ombudsman Blog, 27 February 2009; this comment disappeared from the
blog less than an hour after it was posted, reappeared in the blog the next morning after I re-posted it to ICANNwatch, but later
disappeared once again. All my subsequent comments have been deleted from the ICANN Ombudsman Blog.)

Objections
to renewal of .aero sponsorship agreement
(Note that these comments were docketed by ICANN 5 February 2006, but
were actually sent by me in San Francisco,
received by ICANN at its headquarters in Marina del Rey, and posted on
the Web, on 4 February 2006 local time those places.
Comments were due 4 February 2006, with no specification of time of day
or time zone.)

Evaluation
of the New gTLDs: Policy and Legal Issues
(report to ICANN by Summit Strategies International, 10 July 2004;
see footnote 61, page 77, noting that the issues I raised were not
considered in this report and that, "The monitoring phase recommended by the
Task Force Report is separate from this Evaluation.")